Lord Monckton's summary of Climategate and its issues

Both Steve McIntyre and I are mentioned in this comprehensive summary. I’ve posted some excerpts below, with a link to the full report in PDF form. It is well worth a read. – Anthony

Cold facts about the hot topic of global temperature change after the Climategate scandal

by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley | November 30, 2009

THE WHISTLE BLOWS FOR TRUTH

The whistleblower deep in the basement of one of the ugly, modern tower-blocks of the dismal, windswept University of East Anglia could scarcely have timed it better.

In less than three weeks, the world’s governing class – its classe politique – would meet in Copenhagen, Denmark, to discuss a treaty to inflict an unelected and tyrannical global government on us, with vast and unprecedented powers to control all once-free world markets and to tax and regulate the world’s wealthier nations for its own enrichment: in short, to bring freedom, democracy, and prosperity to an instant end worldwide, at the stroke of a pen, on the pretext of addressing what is now known to be the non-problem of manmade “global warming”.

The unnamed hero of ‘Climategate’, after months of work gathering emails, computer code, and data, quietly sent a 61-megabyte compressed file from one of the university’s servers to an obscure public message-board on the internet, with a short covering note to the effect that the climate was too important to keep the material secret, and that the data from the University would be available for a short time only.

He had caught the world’s politico-scientific establishment green-handed. Yet his first attempts to reveal the highly-profitable fraud and systematic corruption at the very heart of the UN’s climate panel and among the scientists most prominent in influencing it’s prejudiced and absurdly doom-laden reports had failed. He had made the mistake of sending the data-file to the mainstream news media, which had also profited for decades by fostering the “global warming” scare, and by generally denying anyone who disagreed with the official viewpoint any platform.

The whistleblower’s data file revealed, for the first time, the innermost workings of the tiny international clique of climate scientists, centered on the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia, that has been the prime mover in telling the world that it is warming at an unprecedented rate, and that humankind is responsible.

REVEALED: THE ABJECT CORRUPTION OF CLIMATE SCIENCE

The gallant whistleblower now faces a police investigation at the instigation of the University authorities desperate to look after their own and to divert allegations of criminality elsewhere. His crime? He had revealed what many had long suspected:

– A tiny clique of politicized scientists, paid by unscientific politicians with whom they were financially and politically linked, were responsible for gathering and reporting data on temperatures from the palaeoclimate to today’s climate. The “Team”, as they called themselves, were bending and distorting scientific data to fit a nakedly political story-line profitable to themselves and congenial to the governments that, these days, pay the bills for 99% of all scientific research.

The Climate Research Unit at East Anglia had profited to the tune of at least $20 million in “research” grants from the Team’s activities.

The Team had tampered with the complex, bureaucratic processes of the UN’s climate panel, the IPCC, so as to exclude inconvenient scientific results from its four Assessment Reports, and to influence the panel’s conclusions for political rather than scientific reasons.

The Team had conspired in an attempt to redefine what is and is not peer-reviewed science for the sake of excluding results that did not fit what they and the politicians with whom they were closely linked wanted the UN’s climate panel to report.

They had tampered with their own data so as to conceal inconsistencies and errors.

They had emailed one another about using a “trick” for the sake of concealing a “decline” in temperatures in the paleoclimate.

They had expressed dismay at the fact that, contrary to all of their predictions, global temperatures had not risen in any statistically-significant sense for 15 years, and had been falling for nine years. They had admitted that their inability to explain it was “a travesty”. This internal doubt was in contrast to their public statements that the present decade is the warmest ever, and that “global warming” science is settled.

They had interfered with the process of peer-review itself by leaning on journals to get their friends rather than independent scientists to review their papers.

They had successfully leaned on friendly journal editors to reject papers reporting results inconsistent with their political viewpoint.

They had campaigned for the removal of a learned journal’s editor, solely because he did not share their willingness to debase and corrupt science for political purposes.

They had mounted a venomous public campaign of disinformation and denigration of their scientific opponents via a website that they had expensively created.

Contrary to all the rules of open, verifiable science, the Team had committed the criminal offense of conspiracy to conceal and then to destroy computer codes and data that had been legitimately requested by an external researcher who had very good reason to doubt that their “research” was either honest or competent.

THE NATURE ‘TRICK’ TO ‘HIDE THE DECLINE’ IN TEMPERATURES

Among the most revealing of the emails released to the world by the whistleblower was one dated November 1999. In that email, Professor “Phil” Jones of the CRU wrote to Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes, the authors of the infamous “hockey stick” graph that falsely abolished the medieval warm period:

Almost immediately after the news of Climategate broke, Professor Jones told Investigative Magazine’s TGIF Edition that he “had no idea” what he might have meant by the words “hide the decline”. He said:

“They’re talking about the instrumental data which is unaltered – but they’re talking about proxy data going further back in time, a thousand years, and it’s just about how you add on the last few years, because when you get proxy data you sample things like tree rings and ice cores, and they don’t always have the last few years. So one way is to add on the instrumental data for the last few years.”

A few hours later, the science hate-crime website created by the Team cobbled together a jumbled, snivelingly self-serving, and entirely different pretext:

“The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction [the ‘hockey-stick’ graph of pre-instrumental temperatures over the past 1000 years in the Northern Hemisphere], and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s [another prominent member of the Team] maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem” … and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al. in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post-1960 part of their reconstruction, and so, while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.”

Enter Steve McIntyre, the one who had first realized that the UN’s climate panel in 2001 had used a corrupt graph that had falsely abolished the medieval warm period with the aim of pretending that today’s global temperatures are unprecedented in at least 1000 years. Later that day his website, www.climateaudit.org, revealed the truth about the conspirators’ “trick”.

In order to smooth a data series over a given time period, one must pad it with artificial data beyond the endpoint of the real series. However, when Mann, Bradley, and Hughes plotted instrumental data against their reconstructions based on the varying widths of tree-rings from ancient trees, their favourite form of proxy or pre-instrumental reconstructed temperature, no smoothing method could conceal the fact that after 1960 the tree-ring data series trended downward, while the instrumental series trended upward. This was the Team’s “divergence”:

“So Mann’s solution [‘Mike’s Nature trick’] was to use the instrumental record for padding [both the proxy and the instrumental data series], which changes the smoothed series to point upwards.”

Accordingly, though the author of the original email had said that the “trick” was to add instrumental measurements for years beyond available proxy data, his conspirators at the science-hate website admitted it was actually a replacement of proxy data owing to a known but unexplained post-1960 “divergence” between the proxy data and the instrumental data. In fact, it was a fabrication.

The next day, in a statement issued by the University of East Anglia’s press office, Professor Jones fumblingly tried to recover the position:

“The word ‘trick’ was used here colloquially as in a clever thing to do. It is ludicrous to suggest that it refers to anything untoward.”

As we shall see, Professor Jones was not telling the truth.

BREAKING THE BROKEN CODE: DISSECTING THE DODGY DATA

The “Documents” folder in the enormous data-file released by the whistleblower contains many segments of computer program code used by Jones and the Team in contriving the Climate Research Unit’s global temperature series. The data-file also contained a 15,000-line commentary by programmers concerned that the code and the data used by the Team were suspect, were fabricated, and were not fit for their purpose.

Looking at the seldom-tidy code, the sheer number of programs which subject the raw data to various degrees of filtering, processing, and tampering is disconcerting. Some of these alterations were blatant and unacceptable, notably those which removed proxy data that correlate poorly with measured regional temperature, or even replaced proxy data altogether with measured data to conceal a discrepancy between what the proxy data actually showed and what the Team wanted it to show.

The Team’s programmers even admitted, in comments within the code, that they were artificially adjusting or “correcting” the proxy data from tree-rings. In Fortran, the high-level computer language long in use at universities for programming, a programmer’s comment is usually preceded by the statement “REM” for “remark”, indicating that the text on the line following the word “REM” should be ignored by the compiler program that translates the Fortran code that humans can understand into executable machine language that the computer can understand.

One of the commonest remarks included in the program fragments disclosed by the whistleblower is as follows:

“These will be artificially adjusted to look closer to the real temperatures.”

There could scarcely be a plainer admission that the data are being regularly, routinely, materially tampered with, for the sake of making it appear that the proxy data are sufficiently reliable to appear close to the instrumental temperatures.

This is no mere debating point. The UN’s climate panel had issued specific warnings against using proxy data (MXD) from tree-rings, because warmer weather is not the only reason why tree-rings become wider in some years than in others. There are at least two other prominent reasons, both of which can – and do – distort the tree-ring data beyond the point where they are useful as indicators of (or proxies for) pre-instrumental temperatures. First, the tree-rings become wider whenever the weather becomes wetter. Secondly, and of still greater concern, the tree-rings widen when there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And there is 40% more CO2 in the atmosphere today than there was in 1750.

Yet, as McIntyre and McKitrick had established originally in 2003, and had published in a leading journal in 2005, the majority of the data on the basis of which Mann, Bradley and Hughes, and later other members of the Team, had attempted to pretend that there had been no medieval warm period were tree-ring series. Take out the suspect tree-ring series, together with just one other rogue series, and all the remaining data series establish beyond reasonable doubt that the Middle Ages were truly, materially, and globally warmer than the present.

Scientists with programming knowledge have already begun to examine the computer code that Professor Jones and his colleagues had attempted to hide for so long. Here is Marc Sheppard’s selection of three examples of the tortuous sequences of deliberate data tampering that are evident within the program code.

In the very first two words he tells it like it is. CRU is not the ‘victim’ of a computer cracker. They are the perpetrator of a fraud.

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 5:02 pm

DMS

OT, sorry (well maybe not, since a couple of Australian “no ETS” senators raised climategate in parliament).
Australia’s senate has voted down the proposed ETS a second time.http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/02/2759595.htm
This is a “double dissolution trigger” and can allow the incumbent government (who were in favour) to call an early election, presumbaly fought on climate change and humanity’s contribution to it and whether an ETS is an appropriate mechanism besides. Anybody want to come down and help out – the sensible politicians may need a hand.

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 5:11 pm

King of Cool

Australian ETS just voted down in Senate. I feel the real debate on Climate Change is beginning at last – at least in this country.

Great Job Anthony, Steve, keeping it right down the middle.
Science is about seeking the truth…
Hold to the truth, it will always win.

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 5:13 pm

Steve in SC

This is getting better by the minute.

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 5:14 pm

wws

Bravo!
The dam is starting to break, boys, the dam is starting to break!

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 5:15 pm

latitude

Anthony, thank you
I’ve been looking for a “Climategate for Dummies”
and thank you Christopher

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 5:20 pm

INGSOC

I love reading Lord Monckton when he is on a tear!
Bravo sir!

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 5:21 pm

AdderW

I will sleep comfortably only after the high priest (Mann) has been caught and prosecuted, but I think we are getting there.
Have downloaded the emails and stuff now, it makes good reading that, but a lot to go through there is, hoping to find someething juicy myself.

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 5:22 pm

Richard Sharpe

DMS said:

This is a “double dissolution trigger” and can allow the incumbent government (who were in favour) to call an early election, presumbaly fought on climate change and humanity’s contribution to it and whether an ETS is an appropriate mechanism besides. Anybody want to come down and help out – the sensible politicians may need a hand.

Everyone keep the pedal down. Keep discussing it with friends and family. Blogging about it locally, calling in to radio and television news desks, discussing it with representatives and senators, etc.
As Rahm Emmanuel reminds us, never waste a good crisis.

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 5:33 pm

Sunfighter

So do they know for certain now it was a whistleblower or is he just coming to that conclusion and writing it as if its a fact?

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 5:40 pm

DMS

Richard Sharpe (17:28:41) – no, actually probably not. It doesn’t give them a full term if they win (just 2 years in this case because of some backdating conventions) and it will probably give the Greens more senators.
I’m not sure they really want the fight now, although as a conservative/ moderate politician (Christopher Pyne) said on Australian TV last night a double dissolution election day would be March 6, 2010. It will be in the middle of (normal) hot weather and (normal) fire season and so would allow fearmongering to scare pro-AGW opinion to get votes. I wouldn’t put anything past Warmie KRudd.

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 5:43 pm

Douglas DC

this reminds me of an old railroad joke.A young switchman was being trained by the
Foreman in the use of the various handles in the switching tower.”Ok,son now if you saw that freight coming from the east,what would you do?” The young switchman
said”I’d pull that handle second from the left!”-and so on he was impressing the
Foreman, so the Foreman said: Now if the there were one train eastbound and one
train westbound on the same track,what would you do?” “I’d get my sister!”the kid
replied.”YOUR SISTER!”the forman bellowed.”Yep she hasn’t seen a trainwreck before.”
That is what is happening here. A trainwreck….

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 5:45 pm

Carolyn

“On the Internet, however, which in some countries – such as Britain – is now the only independent source of news…”
Wow! I’ll bet Al Gore’s really sorry he invented the Internet now.
Great job guys!

The “science was settled” all right – settled into corruption, manipulation, falsification, and now, ultimately, damnation.
So it is written, so it shall be done.

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 5:46 pm

Mike McMillan

Now the situation has been truly Peer reviewed.

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 5:57 pm

Christopher Byrne

Christ, can you imagine the sickening ad campaigns we’d have to endure? “It’s not you who’ll suffer; it’s them” – zooms in on children laughing and playing, followed by scenes from The Day After Tomorrow. Blergh! Perhaps a re-make of the classic skin cancer nonsense – “CO2 is climate in trauma.”

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 5:59 pm

Capn Jack Walker

Grand Poombah of the Skeptic uber Top Secret Conspiracy, The Lavender Troubadour, Vike Monckton of Benchley.
As usual has a bit to say,
Watch out he’s a big bad nasty skeptic. I heard he clubs dolphins to death with baby seals, if he’s not jumping out of computer screens stealing babies and raping Nannies that’s what the MSM reckon.
Every movement has to have identities.

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 5:59 pm

Nicholas Harding

Thank you my lord.

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 5:59 pm

Sandy

Excellent though the PDF is it would be an awful lot smarter to have a normal web page version to draw in lurkers. Passing surfers aren’t likely to download the PDF unless they are already interested rather like preaching to the choir.

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 6:02 pm

Dave

I have to call a foul on this. It would be hypocritical to criticize CRU and others for jumping to conclusions without evidence, so I wouldn’t tout anyone else doing the same. We don’t know who leaked the documents nor what their motivation was. It could be a hacker or it could be a whistleblower, but we don’t know that for a fact. I just got done in another forum criticizing someone else for demonizing the leaker without knowing who the leaker was and what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Let’s stick with the facts.

As word gets out and people start to question global warming alarmism I would say the anger against the Rudd government will mount. Polls on 2GB said 97% oppose the ETS. A poll in the MSM today 2/3rds favour Tony Abbott as new PM. Regardless of whether we go to an election in 3 or 12 months time the issue is there is now time to disseminate information to people and educate them, there is time for Climategate to progress, there is time for awareness to spread about the climate and a carbon tax. These things all work against the current government as they tried like was done in America to pass a policy at the last minute with copious amounts of revisions so people couldnt get a chance to find out what it was really going on. As people do find out they will be furious as is happening now.

Stossel on O’Reilly right now. O’Reilly said “this is huge” as he introduced Stossel. Stossel needs a bit more info on AGW. His presentation is not that strong. He’s treading very softly…hedging his bets. At least he refers to UEA CRU and others as alarmists. The piece is soft, though. O’Reilly at least is pinning some of the blame on the media and Algore.

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 6:13 pm

Cathy

Ah, bravo boys, keep the exposure of this up; the MSM certainly won’t (!).
Bravo to Monckton too, his bringing charges against these crimatologists is music to my ears. Well, that and his accent. Man I love a proper English accent. 😉

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 6:13 pm

David Palmer

Anthony,
My printer failing to print Monckton article – says something wrong with file.
Very good news from here on defeat of Rudd’s CPRS, will do his ego no harm at all. As if Australia should lead on climate change legislation!

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 6:19 pm

jtom

Hey, will someone give me a research grant for a study of forest fires upwind of Mann’s tree-ring site? I hypothesize that the increased temps, carbon dioxide, and ash (fertilizer) from large enough fires would have impacted the width of the rings. Surely there must have been some over the last thousand years. A grant of, say $2 million would allow my co-researchers and me to meet in Tahiti to discuss the project, and pay someone in Russia to undertake the work. Thanks for your support!

Monckton has barely scratched the surface. At one point the clowns attempt to compute the distance (great circle) between instrumentation sites. This is an elementary exercise in celestial navigation. They botched it.
Come on! The data which they purportedly used probably still exists with the originators of that data. It cannot all be lost.
I know that the University of East Anglia cannot reproduce their results. Their conclusions belong in the justly famous Journal of Irreproducible Results.
The one certainty is that the IPCC can no longer be trusted.

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 6:21 pm

Raymond

Meanwhile,
the laughingstock of the world marches on to Copenhagen as if nothing had happened to decide actions on a problem which exists only in the mind, with no psychiatrists attending, while
the media are burrowing their heads in the sand in front of the greatest scoop for decades, and
environmentalists are clinging to visions of disaster like a four year old to his teddy bear.

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 6:23 pm

Spenc BC

twawki
Please provide links to substantiate these numbers. I hope you are right but we need the facts.

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 6:23 pm

TattyMane

that PDF is a great read, both in a general sense and as it relates to Climategate.

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 6:24 pm

Spenc BC

Stossel on O’Reilly
Just watched Fox. I was unimpressed with either of these twits. No facts just generalizations and a o hum attitude. I think they think this is essentially over. India and China will do nothing so it does not matter. People seem satisfied to see it die with out recompense. What about the Billions this has already eaten. What about the damage to the true cause of true environmental science and other scientists. Why wont the press, press Gore and his Ilk? The one place the MSM takes it up and they fail to take it seriously. Shame really!

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 6:30 pm

James Sexton

King of Cool (17:12:46) :
Australian ETS just voted down in Senate. I feel the real debate on Climate Change is beginning at last – at least in this country.=============================================
There isn’t a debate any longer. There is fraud and the acceptance of the proof that is debated. Sadly, science has taken a giant “hit” here. It had to be done. Thank God there is still math, chemistry, biology, and physics. While there is still much work to be done, the truth is here, in front of us. The truth vindicates what we all knew intuitively. Now, we have to continue. They(the team) will become more shrill. They will divert. They will obfuscate. They will mislead(lie). They will attack. Be vigilant.

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 6:31 pm

Skeptic Tank

jtom (18:20:12) :
…
A grant of, say $2 million would allow my co-researchers and me to meet in Tahiti to discuss the project, and pay someone in Russia to undertake the work. Thanks for your support!

Discuss the project?!! No, no, no. In Tahiti, you’ll be discussing your findings while you fund (expenses only) undergrads who are collecting samples (which will eventually be ‘misplaced’ or ‘lost in a fire’). But you’ll have your statistically corrected ‘data’ from your Tahiti reconstruction.

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 6:32 pm

joseph

Yes – Australia is safe – temporarily – and now thank the Lords – God and Monckton – that at last the public is starting to cotton on!

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 6:50 pm

Bill Illis

What is really good about all this is now all the science will be re-examined.
All the climate researchers out there who have exagerrated their results will be hoping nobody checks their emails and their papers.
They will quit playing fast and loose with the figures.
Other information, like that from Monckton and Lindzen, will have to be considered.
Mann is also going down. Whether others like Hansen and Schmidt also face an inquiry is an open question.
But what are they going to say at Copenhagen. Surely, a media person or two will ask about ClimateGate.

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 6:51 pm

John in NZ

Thank you Lord Monkton. Keep up the good work.
@ Papa Ray (18:11:41) :
“You should read seven answers to climate contrarian nonsense. Then you will see how wrong you all are. And it is in one of the most valued Scientific publications there is.
spit..
Papa Ray”
Sorry Papa Ray but I’m not convinced. I read the seven answers and they are either irrelevant, straw man arguments or just plain wrong.
Global warming theory is testable and yet the believers refuse to test it. If the theory matched the evidence from the real world, there would be no need to fabricate the data.
Note this climategate email below.
They shifted the values so the IPCC Summary for policy makers(SPM) would say what they wanted.
1169653761.txt
Kevin (Trenbath)
> Thanks. The averages of the values in Fig 3.6 over 1961-1990 turned out
> not to be exactly 0.000 owing to missing data in the reference period (a
> perennial problem Phil is well aware of). But Susan (?) wanted the SPM
> curve to average exactly 0.000 in 1961-1990 so the values were shifted
> by somewhere between 0.02 and 0.03.
>
> Regards
>
> David Parker

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 6:53 pm

idlex

It reads like a thriller.
So when is the movie out? And who’s going to play Phil Jones and Michael Mann and Steve McIntyre and the unnamed hero in the basement? I think that the rather drab Hadley CRU building needs to be updated to something more like a Death Star orbiting the Earth. It probably needs a good car chase somewhere in the middle. And who’s going to be the eye candy?

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 6:55 pm

hotrod

I was also unimpressed by Stossel’s presentation, and I like him. He had a half a dozen openings to get into substantive issues, and missed them entirely.
He could have brought up that the folks involved have been caught in numerous statistical abuses that misrepresent reality, and give a false impression of warming when the raw data does not support that conclusion. He could have spent some time that they are violating very fundamental principles of openness in science, and actively blocking release of data and methods to allow others to validate their assertions. He could have mentioned that they have been caught red handed (oops green handed) obstructing the publication of scientific papers by others, and artificially inflating the importance of the papers of friends. Not to mention the data quality issues seen in the Harry_read_me files that show the computer coding is useless junk.
Larry

You should read seven answers to climate contrarian nonsense. Then you will see how wrong you all are. And it is in one of the most valued Scientific publications there is.

No, it is in one of the most valued Scientific publications there was.
In the 1970s, SciAm had a well-earned reputation for bring new science to the intelligent layman’s attention. Their main articles were not about the most recent research, but pulled together many little items of research to decribe new knowledge and new technologies.
For example, I remember important articles about photosynthesis as that chemical pathway was getting settled, on lasers and holography when they were making the transition from laboratory curiosity to tool. In high school I summarized a paper on electrophoresis from various reprints our biology teacher had ordered.
Other features of the magazine changed people for life. For me, Martin Gardner’s Mathematical Games was a favorite – I can still make a hexaflexagon and made several Soma Cubes from 2″x2″ oak stock 15 years ago. My name (misspelled) is in one issue for being among the first people to trace the fate of the “R” pentomino in John Conway’s game of Life. Other readers went to Jearl Walker’s The Citizen Scientist and did the experiments or made the tools he described. And of course, there were the Questar Telescope ads to drool over.
However, the creation of new magazines aimed at a market between Popular Science and Scientific American flooded the market and advertising revenue dried up. Eventually SciAm was sold to a German company and its golden age was over, never to be regained.
The magazine occasionally took a look at political issues, and that increased greatly after the sale. I bought a copy once because it had an article on the GPS system, but was extremely disappointed. Pretty pictures, virtually no content. Recently they have fully embraced AGW and science as seen by “The Team.”
I took a look at those seven points. There is nothing there that gives a balanced look at the issues involved. It would be fun to rewrite it to be as balanced as possible. I’m sure you would agree that “The most recent contrarian fad is based largely on work by Henrik Svensmark” is rejecting his work even before there are any results from CLOUD. For heaven’s sake, Svensmark has an interesting hypothesis, it’s being tested, it may pan out, it may be junk. Fad? Come on. The author doesn’t understand Scientific Method.
“Claim 5: Climatologists conspire to hide the truth about global warming by locking away their data.” Umm, if you’re reading here, you should realized that claim is the subject of substantial review. Hey – they say “surely the thousands of e-mails and other files stolen from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit and distributed by hackers on November 20 would bear proof of it. So far, however, none has emerged.” Yeah, right.
The first comment on the article says “jercarobrien1 at 10:36 AM on 11/30/09: The narrow, biased and unscientific perspective presented in your article causes me to continue to lose respect for your magazine’s scientific credibility and objectivity.”
My father saved decades of SciAms, my sister maintained the tradition until she moved to California. We talked about what to do with them, and sadly agreed to let them go. But I saved Henry and Elizabeth Stommel’s article on Volcano Weather, that lives on as my 1816 web page. How long do you save your Scientific Americans?

I think this whole affair is going to generate a ton of PhD dissertations, attempting to get at a good estimate of global temperatures from the raw data or analysing the bias in the CRU data. Some brilliant Ph.D student will make his/her reputation in “demonstrating” where the errors are and coming up with a good estimate of global (or a subset) of surface temps in the 19th and 20th centuries.

I just finished reading the PDF, and it’s one of the best I’ve seen from Lord Monckton with regard to the data. The thing that particularly struck me was his observation that the satellite data was calibrated to the temperature record, so there may need to be recalibration done once the dust has settled on all this. Also the comparisons of the Santa Rose and NIWA data real vs announced. AJStrata has done similar analysis on the CRU dataset and finds no overall warming.
On a less happy note the Munk Debate came 60/40 in favour of the motion, i.e. our team lost. I think we lost because it was more about appeals to emotion from both sides than hard science. So there’s still work to do.

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 7:23 pm

Ian

Lord Monckton has perhaps overstated some conclusions, which is a dangerous, CRU-like thing to do. There is much in the released materials which provides evidence of unprofessional, even potentially illegal, behaviour. Their data has been made suspect as a result; more importantly, it may lead to revisions in the manner in which this research is conducted (and published) in the future. The goal should be to push for the data, to examine and critique their methods and to review the code.
For me, this was over the top. We don’t know if it was a whistleblower: that is an assumption; I don’t find RealClimate particularly edifying, but it is no more “venomous” than many sites in the blogosphere; not every member of the Team was involved in each of the separate behaviours described; some of those behaviours are potentially exaggerated – for example, I’ve not seen any specific email that stated they were actually destroying code, and although Phil Jones said he’d rather destroy the data than hand it over to Mr. McIntyre, it’s not clear the he did so, etc.
It doesn’t actually help the argument, if you set up straw men for the other side to knock down; or exaggerate and give them the opportunity to claim some kind of tarnished victory as a result.

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 7:29 pm

Kathryn U

Spent two hours tonite watching http://www.munkdebates.com/debates/climate_change
The moderator kept most comments of dissenters off the live blog.
David Roberts (Grist.com staff writer) overpowered the conversation.
Elizabeth May told heart-rending anecdotes. She really knows her lines.
The majority of viewers agrees Climate Change is the over-riding issue of our time.
May tells a good story. We need to find those who tell a good story!

Vote Up0Vote Down

December 1, 2009 7:32 pm

ET

I’ve noticed that too about the media, they just don’t take the time to educate themselves on the issues long enough to get into the meat of it, or maybe they just assume their audience won’t want the detail, either way, makes for a weak presentation, which looks like a weak argument.
That’s the quality of our media these days, non-science oriented, but good talkers…reminds me of our politicans…except just add the legal degree.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on WUWT. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. This notice is required by recently enacted EU GDPR rules, and since WUWT is a globally read website, we need to keep the bureaucrats off our case!OkPrivacy policy